In a surprising turn of events, Epic announced today that they would be dropping the subscription model for Unreal Engine 4, and offering it and its full source code completely free for non-profit purposes.
If You Love Something, Set It Free
Tim wrote: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free, and all future updates will be free!
You can download the engine and use it for everything from game development, education, architecture, and visualization to VR, film and animation. When you ship a game or application, you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter. It’s a simple arrangement in which we succeed only when you succeed.
This is the complete technology we use at Epic when building our own games. It scales from indie projects to high-end blockbusters; it supports all the major platforms; and it includes 100% of the C++ source code. Our goal is to give you absolutely everything, so that you can do anything and be in control of your schedule and your destiny. Whatever you require to build and ship your game, you can find it in UE4, source it in the Marketplace, or build it yourself – and then share it with others.
Giving away stuff seems to be what epic is doing best, as if you use the engine, they may even give you a grant to help your project see release!
From UDK, to the very reasonable subscription model for UE4, to completely free, Epic continues to prove themselves the kings of generosity in the game engine market. See the full article HERE.
Awesome! That's going to shake things up.
Definitely - I wonder if Unity or Crytek will change their models soon, or risk being left behind. Unity especially, for $1,500 you get about what Crytek offers for $9/mo, and less than what Epic offers for free. Not an enticing deal for anyone lining the engines up for comparison.
Anyway, I'm really happy to try EU4 out now, having a blast so far. Should be fun to see what people come up with too.
How interesting! Now that it's free, I wonder what marvelous creations modders and developers will make from this.
Rather exciting tbh. :)
2d scrolling games with 8bit like graphics mostly, nah just joking
@Foxtrop: Haha, the first thing I tried making it was a 2D sidescroller :P
I love 3D games, but 2D's where my skills are, and UE4 has some surprisingly great 2D tools.
my reaction: Youtube.com
LOVE IT!!! UE4 keeps blowing all the other engines out of the water!
I bet the first customer will be Activision - it's about time they upgraded their engine from 1998! If they do come knocking; charge them $3,000 a minute;-)
what a good chap!
Seen it in mail, still amazed and stunned. This is an extremely generous move from EPIC. Just imagine how many talanted people can now make their dream come true. I wonder what Unity devs will have to offer to their public now, since we have one of the most advanced engines for free.
probably nothing since Unity is stubborn
I stand corrected
Such amaze. Very cool. To the moooon!
Epic redefining the word *epic* :D
I'm in love with UE4 <3
WOOHOO!
While I am happy with Epic's decision, I wonder when Half-Life, Bioshock, Call of Duty, Deus Ex and maybe C&C can take an epic unreal gameplay out of this recent engine, rather than their own engines.
Just awesomely EPIC!!! by november of next year cod will be on the unreal engine with the same yearly shi_ts LOL!
I've been trying out the engine this afternoon, and I gotta say, it's kind of amazing. Much more user-friendly and intuitive than UDK was, and while this is just an initial impression that might change as I use it more, I'm liking the built in Paper2D system more than Unity's 2D toolset.
Epic has certainly been living up to their name as of late :)
Honestly how does Epic Games even manage to turn out a profit? They are literally too awesome!!
EA and Ubisoft, if you want people to love you take notes of what Epic does.
No more subscription for updates. Great.
Holy molly! Not only is it free but ONLY a 5% royalty!? It's getting harder and harder to justify using anything else!
and i was going to pay for it soon, haha.
Free ? YES !!!
Just to ask explicitly, does it mean we can make free games on it without having to pay anything?
Yep